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I'm all for not burning out, but I feel like there's something missing from all these articles admonishing people to work less. It's great that people can work

I'm all for not burning out, but I feel like there's something missing from all these articles admonishing people to work less. It's great that people can work 5-6 hours a day, no weekends, and still build a great business. But if that's truly more efficient, should we expect to see some massive billion dollar companies run that way? How much did Bill Gates, Larry & Sergey, Jeff Bezos, etc. work when they were getting their companies off the ground? When they look back, do they feel the time was wasted, or do they feel it was necessary? Or to the Metalab example, who's to say that the success Andrew experienced when he cut back on his work was not due in part to the long hours he had put in previously? Not trying to admonish people to work more - just saying there's some missing analysis here!

ebiester 14y ago
We think of productivity as "how much can you get done in an hour" * "how many hours you work." Unfortunately, as humans, we need recharge time. If I code 80 hours this week, the first twenty hours will be very productive, the next 20 will be slightly less productive, the next 20 will be significantly less productive, and the last 20 might be hurting more than helping. After a day of rest, I might be back at the same productivity as I was for the middle 40 last week, and degrade from there. The irony is that the more hours I work, the less I get done, the less difficult problems I can tackle. Meetings take less out of people, be we still make poorer decisions by tiring our brains rather than taking passive time to rest, and using spare cycles to reflect on how we can squeeze more productivity out of the time we can work. This, of course, ignores that some people burn out easier than others, and some have higher peaks than others. Working a truly focused 20 hours is more exhausting than 50 hours of semi-focused work for many people, and isn't rewarded in many corporate cultures. Find your own personal style.
- swampthing 14y ago
  Yea, I get the theory - my point is just that we need more than anecdotes when it comes to posts like this.

ebiester 14y ago

We think of productivity as "how much can you get done in an hour" * "how many hours you work." Unfortunately, as humans, we need recharge time. If I code 80 hours this week, the first twenty hours will be very productive, the next 20 will be slightly less productive, the next 20 will be significantly less productive, and the last 20 might be hurting more than helping. After a day of rest, I might be back at the same productivity as I was for the middle 40 last week, and degrade from there. The irony is that the more hours I work, the less I get done, the less difficult problems I can tackle. Meetings take less out of people, be we still make poorer decisions by tiring our brains rather than taking passive time to rest, and using spare cycles to reflect on how we can squeeze more productivity out of the time we can work. This, of course, ignores that some people burn out easier than others, and some have higher peaks than others. Working a truly focused 20 hours is more exhausting than 50 hours of semi-focused work for many people, and isn't rewarded in many corporate cultures. Find your own personal style.

swampthing 14y ago
Yea, I get the theory - my point is just that we need more than anecdotes when it comes to posts like this.